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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Jerry Schoendorf <jerry AT schoe.com>
  • To: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>, Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
  • Date: Tue, 5 May 2015 12:26:16 -0400

Thanks for the question that started this thread, and thank-you Randall, for your comments. The articles on BaileyBees are helpful and great!

The discussion, in view of my own situation, prompts a follow-up question.
This spring one of my hives:
  • has no eggs or brood since April 21
  • has 3 supers of full of nectar above the old brood nest that are backfilling from the top down
  • has 20+ frames of mostly empty cells in the bottom
  • has not (I believe) swarmed
  • is full of bees but showing no signs of crowding
  • has a large and majestic queen who is NOT laying
Is this what the literature describes as the “dearth before the flow”, i.e., a lull for several weeks before intense nectar accumulation?

Thanks,
Jerry Schoendorf




On May 3, 2015, at 7:17 PM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Brad,

There are always a few laying workers in a hive. Normally, the housekeeping bees recognize their eggs as being "not right" (for example, they don't have queen marker pheromone on them) and they eat them. However in a hive that feels it is hopelessly queenless, the worker bees accept the laying worker eggs as being "normal" and act as if they have a queen; they are engaging in a last-chance Hail Mary play to at least get some of their genes out in the world through drones. So technically the real problem isn't laying workers, it is worker bees that embrace laying workers.

How long this takes can vary a LOT between colonies and between bee races, from two weeks to never. It also depends on how long it has been since there has been worker brood, not just how long it has been queenless. If you were to periodically insert a frame of open worker brood into a hive, that would quash the laying-worker-acceptance problem.

I do think you are right, though -- I think that as a rule of thumb a hive that is truly queenless for a month is clearly on the brink of accepting laying workers. And it takes about a month for a new queen to go from egg to evidence that she's there (eggs/brood). So the beekeeper is left scratching his/her head. You can't successfully insert a new store-bought queen if the hive is secretly queen-right. But you don't want to wait far too long before doing something. That's why the standard advice of inserting a frame of brood in the questionable hive to see if they build queen cells is a really good practice. Not only will it signal you regarding the queen-right status, the pheromones from the open worker brood will help delay acceptance of laying worker brood.

This is where understanding what is going on in the hive and deciding what is LIKELY happening is important. If someone says that their hive is queenless & broodless in October, that is likely a very different thing than if they say it is queenless & broodless during spring swarming season. In the latter, in my limited experience, about 100% of the time the bees are doing what they've been doing for the past 50 million or so years: reproducing via swarming, which involves a break in brood and a period where the hive deceptively appears queenless. The human panic factor kicks in slightly earlier than the natural resolution of the issue. Patience is called for, as well as a quick refresher in bee math. I'm a guilty as the next guy as far as impatience and forgetting the math, and I have lots of sad stories as a result. But I'm trying to do better!

Randall

On 5/3/2015 4:37 PM, Hamsiba Family wrote:
CA+x3aG64dHJreeiUCKkH9mj9nPqzeT1aUut0xKMNqM-UvfDj-g AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite" class="">

Randall,

I have seen lots of info on timing of queens. Is there a rule of thumb on when the threat of laying workers really starts to get likely?

It seems that it must be more than a few weeks as we are often told to wait a few weeks to see what is happening.

Just trying to up my mentoring game.

Thanks, Brad

On May 3, 2015 2:35 PM, "Randall Austin" <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:
George,

It is way too early to expect to see evidence of a queen. The article <here> discusses the queen development timeline that you can use to find the earliest possible date that you may see eggs. The earliest you can usually expect to see eggs after swarming is a little less than 3 weeks, but this depends on a host of factors. As a practical matter, brood at least 3 or so days old are a lot more obvious to see than eggs, so add another 6 days to the whole deal before it is clear that there is a queen.

If you introduce a store-bought queen during the swarming queen-replacement process, the workers will most assuredly kill the high-dollar queen. So your situation (which is shared by all of us at some point) calls for patience. From your description, everything should be progressing as it should; wait it out and check again in a few weeks.

Randall

On 5/2/2015 6:36 PM, George Morris wrote:
Help/ advice!!!
We have 2 hive that both swarmed this spring, and unfortunately we did not catch the swarms.  But after we inspected the hives, we initially saw a queen in both hives.  Swarming happened over a week ago on both hives and we went into them today to look for the queens and or fresh eggs.  We saw neither.  The question is, are we early for seeing eggs laid by a new queen, even if we didn't see the queen, or should we be seeing signs of eggs at this stage.  Should we requeen, with purchased queens or give it some more time?

Any advice is good advice, and if someone has some time to come over and take a look, that would also be appriciated.  Our hives are located on the west side of Chapel Hill.

George
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